Christy Carlson Reveals Mental Health & Alcohol Struggles

The former Even Stevens actress, Christy Carlson Romano, has opened up about her struggles with alcohol and mental health.

After leaving the Disney Channel series, she explains in an essay for Teen Vogue that she has “never been perfect or pulled together as my reputation or the successes of my young adulthood might suggest,”

Furthering, “I won’t be the last child actor to tell you the pitfalls of early-onset fame … But if I’ve learned anything from these experiences, it’s that being famous should come second to creating a life that you personally feel fulfilled with.”

Growing up in the entertainment industry that demanded her full attention, Christy craved a normal childhood, and could only dream of the perfect college experience. She said, “I worked full days and would go home and be tutored in a different subject every night. The idea of one day having a college life become my greatest fantasy. I would watch teen movies and become intensely jealous or normal kids, at the moodiest, like a misfit.”

Once she did attend school, it wasn’t at all the way she pictured, “A tape inside my head softly began to play, telling me I wasn’t good enough in either the normal or entertainment world … My personal value was irrelevant until validated by my most recent accomplishment.”

Those around Christy advised her to stay in the entertainment business, otherwise, her career would be ruined, which she agrees, “In retrospect, it probably did. But in my heart, I was running away from the responsibility of fame and toward a glamorised fantasy of adolescence,” — after college and the feeling of being a misfit, she tried returning to her roots in theatre, but she began to “flirt with other methods of self-destruction,”

Now her career was looming towards the end, she “became a bit harder-edged, binge-drank more at loud nightclubs, and started to accept the transient natures of love, sex and friendship … Growing up, I entertained thousands of families only to feel completely lonely. People were as replaceable as they had deemed me to be. Imposter syndrome had stiff competition against my self-hatred at that point.”

She explains that instead of using objects to self-harm, she would “scratch,” her skin with her “fingernail” because she was “too scared to use a knife.”

The now 35-year-old married Brendan Rooney in 2013, and the couple shares two children together, Isabella Victoria, 2, and Sophia Elizabeth, born in February 2019.

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